Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) is a software development process improvement program that gives organizations a framework to assess their current software development processes and identify areas for improvement. Businesses with US and European government and defense customers often require capability maturity—a certified level of CMMI compliance ensuring that software development processes meet quality and efficiency standards.
CMMI is based on a set of best practices and guidelines consisting of five maturity levels at various stages of process improvement: Initial: No standardization, project success depends largely on individual efforts.
Managed: Focus on planning, monitoring, and controlling software development, but processes are not fully defined.
Defined: Well-defined and documented software development processes are standardized and consistently applied across projects.
Quantitatively Managed: Focus on data analysis and performance measurement to ensure that processes are predictable and meet customers’ requirements.
Optimizing: Continuous process improvement, innovation, experimentation, and risk-taking to improve software development processes.